


Eidothea's Shroud

by MorbidOptimist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F, Gen, Mermaids, Post-Apocalypse, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 16:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14794124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorbidOptimist/pseuds/MorbidOptimist
Summary: Life is peaceful within the tiny town that Kanaya's mother settles them in, its weather is fair, and the seas nearly peaceful; Kanaya is grateful for nature's natural bounty. It is only by a trick of the wind, that she begins to discover there's more beneath their water's surface than ever met her eye.





	Eidothea's Shroud

**Author's Note:**

> ( originally anonymously prompted in my tumblr inbox )   
> ( *Eidothea was a prophetic sea nymph )

Kanaya Maryam loved her terrace garden. She loved the smell of the salt on the tidal breezes; she loved the lofty feel, of the tiny fishing town nestled snuggly in the crevices of their hills. She was fond of the people that lived there, and fonder of the tiny textile shop she and her mother worked in. 

The weary women had, Kanaya suspected, a long, and perhaps sordid past. She often imagined what her mother’s past might have been; between the hidden tattoos and her painted lips, Kanaya wondered if she had once been some once great leader of a resistance, taken prisoner and branded for her forthright tongue. From the swaths of fine silks and linens she stored in their cubbards and mended across their shoulders, Kanaya also thought that she might have instead, been some wisened handmaiden on handcarved ship, out on the open wide seas under the ruthless dare of merciful Maquiese. 

-Childish notions, she was sure; but it helped pass the time and let her feel at least somewhat, like she understood the old woman and the murmured oddities she was want to utter. 

_‘Don’t disrespect the seafoam’, ‘Don’t wander on a full moon’, ‘Consume the rich’, ‘Metal was the death of man’;_  countless others.   

Kanaya counted her fanciful musings as an inherent part of her young age; nearly the best of fourteen and twice as fair. She was a child of summer, the local weavers like to sing; she still had youth in her soul, and the spring in her veins. 

It was an early morning, just after the break of dawn, that Kanaya found herself musing on such things, as she walked out onto her bedroom’s ledge; keen to tend the readying to blossom vines and numerously budding bulbs. 

She often tended her terrace garden in the hazey moments before the petal hued light of dawn, before breakfast and the call of the tiny village called for her attentions; the morning mist still awash over the wild treetops and abundant brush below, obscuring the view of the nearby sea-kissed shore. 

Kanaya leaned out over the sculpted rail, and lifted herself up to her very toes; starting to catch a glimpse of the mighty waters slumbering out in the near distance.

The early morning breeze, swept up against her body, ruffling her gown and hair, bringing an eased smile to her lips; the slimmest peak of ocean water wavering in her view.

The breeze pushed a little harder, and without a moment’s notice with which to react, the gossamer sheet Kanaya had thrown about her shoulders was slid off, the swath pulsating and rippling gently out into the air before her like some impressionist’s dream. 

A jolt of panic ran through her body, heightening her awareness; while not perhaps the most valuable of fabrics her mother had bestowed her, it was still too unsightly a loss for Kanaya to allow herself to consider letting the wind simply drift the sheet out where it was want. -She quite preferred to keep her reputation of being a diligent, well-mannered child who responsibly looked after her things. 

The sheet was already well out of her grasp’s reach; Kanaya spun on her heels and darted back into her room, hastily grabbing her woolen shawl to wrap around herself on her way out of her room, down the hall, down the stairs, around the bend, through her kitchen, and out from the sideward door.  

She skittered along the stoney path, unsure as of what direction she wanted to take, before gauging the how best to follow the wind. 

The side of her mother’s house never saw much use, having no yard or paths to speak of; Kanaya pushed her way through brambles and bushes on her way down the craggy grass-dappled slope. The grass and branches made for rickety sudden handholds as she lost her footing; the rock itself was treacherous. Kanaya would feel out with her feet, coming to rest on soft, wet squishy moss, only to then sink in and catch along her ankles as she gave them her weight.  

Soon enough Kanaya was sliding more than unclimbing; all but slipping along on her rear as she picked up speed. Her time in the village kills made her reckless; her youthful nature made her brave. The thought of her rash behavior never crossed her mind. 

Finally, Kanaya made it unceremoniously to the ground. 

She looked herself over briefly, noting the scratches and muddy smears on her legs before adjusting her shift. 

She huffed, forming a tiny cloud against her lips, and looked at the shore. 

It was thin, more rock than sand, and the foliage jutted out brutal and waning. 

Noting the natural stone arch in the hill before her casting its chilled shadow over her and the strand, Kanaya stepped into the lapping waters, and kept to the edge of the shore. 

Past the arch the water deepened, the shoreline all but disappeared between the great boulders jutting up from below. Kanaya clambered onto them slowly, scanning the trees and nearby waters as she went for the lost cloth. 

Hopping from rock to algae coated rock, Kanaya tried to keep her footings steady as she searched the rocks further from the shore, to get a better vantage point of the treetops that were just now catching the first peachy rays of the sun. 

_‘I wonder if anyone’s ever been this way,’_  she wondered, scanning the treeline. 

_‘I hope mother doesn’t find me gone,’_  she thought, as she crept on; ‘ _She’s so fussy when she’s upset.’_

A strange trick of the light caught her attention in one of the shadows in the watery shadows.

For a moment, Kanaya was certain she’d seen the silk shifting through the water between the rocks, only to disappear closer to the hill where the waves crushed against. Her attention following her imagined line of sight, Kanaya noticed an odd cast of shadow along the hill’s breast. 

It looked to have a secluded divet, of some sort. 

‘ _I do hope it didn’t snag,_ ’ she fretted, ‘ _Ever so much harder to mend than a tear.’_

She made her way over to the divot in the hillface, and peered around to search its shadowed nook. 

Kanaya couldn’t see any signs of her wayward cloth, and the water lapping up at her middle was beyond cold and persistent; she kept a hand firmly on the hill to keep from being bowled over. 

_‘I wonder where this goes,’_  she mused, noticing the path inside the divot the pointed sideward through the rock, as if to follow the waterlined shore. 

She thought for a heartbeat, of shoreline caves that filled over during high tides, but the thoughts were faint and slim. 

Kanaya slipped inside easily enough, though the water now fell easily to her chest, fanning her shawl and shift out around her. Her teeth chittered through the cold, and her breath was admittedly a little rushed, as she pressed on in childish excitement. 

The tunnel wasn’t completely sunblocked; intermittently, tiny streamlined rays of light seeped in from the smaller rocks and grasses to reflect daintily along the cavern walls and floor. The water was nearly crystal clear, though Kanaya’s trekking soon stirred up an obscuring cloud of murky fog. 

The tunnel stretched on, far longer actually, than Kanaya had anticipated. 

_‘I’ll be glad for lunch, at this rate,’_  she mused, treading on. 

She lost track of time, fascinated by the tiny tidepool-like ecosystems lining the tunnel walls as she walked; the tunnel floor, though oddly free of larger rocks or boulders, proved to be uneven, allowing the waters to sometimes raise, and falling to her stomach, or to sometimes deepen and the water would lap against her neck.

Kanaya went further still, amazed that the tunnel hadn’t turned or branched out in any way.   

As she went on, Kanaya began to notice things that were… odd.

strange formations in the rocks, barely jutting out of them, or else cutting into the walls of the cave; formations that could have been the simple result of different types of earth sliding around in the past as they were want to surely, but; Kanaya felt a quiet, worming suspicion in her gut that whispered a dual coated thought of tempted curiosity and uncanny waryiness. 

A thought that the strange formations, may once not have been rock at all. 

Her village was old, she thought; there wasn’t much in the surrounding countryside to recall from, but Kanaya was certain that there weren’t any local legends or historical events upon which she could pull from.

‘ _Perhaps I am the first one here,_ ’ she reasoned, ‘ _And they’ll name the ruins after me, if they are fossils,’_  she placated herself. 

The not-rocks increased in frequency, as she pressed further in; they were coated in tiny plants and corroded over, but Kanaya was now entertaining the thought that the pieces were of an old metal, rather than of any kind of stone. 

‘That’s silly,’she argued with herself, _‘Who would ever build a house out of metal instead of stone?”_  

She couldn’t even conceive the number of objects it would likely take to melt down, for such a feat. 

As she was lost in thought, she found her feet hitting soft, warm sand, and sunlight streaming down her face. 

The cavern, open to the heavens, was amazingly circular, and pooled to a deep, amazing blue in the middle; Kanaya was instantly sure that the patch was stupendously over her head, and she made a note to keep to the pool’s outer rim. 

In the sand, she noted odd figures; sculptors styled in a way she’d never seen before, even under the seaferns and barnacles. Along the back wall, she noticed what looked like her errant swath of fabric, pooled around itself in a gently wavering lull. 

Relief eased her shoulders, her old thoughts vanishing; Kanaya smiled as she treaded towards it, breaking into a gentle floating swim, as she crossed over the deeper waters. 

The light was dimmer, in the far side of the roofless cave; Kanaya found herself holding her breath as she reached out for the sheet, as if fearing it would fling itself out of her grasp again at any moment. 

A flurry of movement overtook Kanaya’s senses. 

She wasn’t sure what happened exactly; but one second, she was reaching forward, her fingertips just grazing along the feeling of something thin and slightly slimy, and the next, she was bowled over, submerged under the water, her shawl and a flurry of bubbles clouding her bleareyed vision.

When she resurfaced, she ran her hand over her face and hair, slicking the water back, she looked around. 

There was a stunned, pale looking face, looking at her, a few feet away.

Kanaya was stunned; she’d never seen the girl before, and certainly had not expected her to appear from her sheet. 

The girl’s shock turned into an intensity, and the girl eased towards her in the water, and started to excitedly chatter away at her in a language of clicks and harsh consonants that Kanaya didn’t understand. 

She wondered, vaguely, if perhaps the girl was a foreigner, new town as she and her mother once had been.

“I’m sorry, but, I don’t know what you’re saying,” she offered the girl gently; she tried to offer her a warm, reassuring smile. 

The girl hunched closer to the water, as if confused; Kanaya waited a moment, unsure of what to do, and the girl surprised her, by nearly melting through the water to ripple up in front of her, freely illuminated by the sun.

The girl wasn’t normal, was Kanaya’s first thought. 

_‘She’s so… pretty,’_ was her second.   

The girl, odd as her features were, was like something out of Kanaya’s old picture books; illustrated with watercolored pastels and descriptive inks. She swirled around her, investigating her, tugged on her toes and shift; prompting Kanaya’s brain to quietly realize something about the girl curling effortlessly around her. 

The girl wasn’t covered in a gown like she was.

_That was her skin._

Or fins, rather, as Kanaya quickly put together. 

The girl swirled around her, her long, pearly iridescent fins brushing against her back, to bring their faces together again. 

“You’re human,” the girl said; her wide lilac eyes blinking horizontally.

“I’m sorry,” Kanaya offered, fascinated by her beauty. 

“It’s… nice to see someone again,” the girl replied softly; the girl turned away, likely glancing into her memories. 

“What is this place?” Kanaya asked, trying her best to talk evenly while treading water.

The girl turned back to her. She smiled, Kanaya thought; a strange movement of the muscles in her face, a slight fanning of her frilled gills and spinal fins. 

“A long time ago, before the end of the world, there was a mother who lived where you shelter now, back when it was a temple carved from the colored sands. She created me, gave me my fins;” the’s girl’s jaw moved strangely, as she spoke her words, “as the world went on, the temple and times were forgotten. _I,_  was forgotten,” she mourned, her great tail gliding gently behind her; “I’ve been here, more or less, ever since.”

“You know where I live?” Kanaya asked, surprised. 

“I hear you sing,” the girl replied, a light, oddly pleased look to her features as she leaned nearer the water’s surface.

Kanaya felt her body shiver, still chilled by the nightsoaked sea. 

“You were human, once?” Kanaya asked. 

“Perhaps,” the girl replied. 

“What was it like, before the end of the world?”

The girl thought a moment, her great tail breaching the water in a lazed slap. 

“The same. It is always much the same for me,” she at length, replied. 

“Who are you?” Kanaya asked, wading closer.

The girl looked at her; Kanaya worried her lips.  

“A god no longer, it seems,” she murmured; “Call me by that flower, for which you often sing,” she demanded elegantly; “I’ll be terribly distraught, if you don’t fancy me at least as much as they.”

“Rose,” Kanaya agreed, pooling the name on her tongue. 

“Rose,” the girl agreed.  


End file.
